The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touch pads and touch screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to manipulate user interface objects on a display.
Exemplary manipulations include changing the formatting attributes (e.g., colors, line thickness, font, etc.) of one or more user interface objects. Exemplary user interface objects include digital images, video, text, icons, and other graphics. A user may need to perform such manipulations on user interface objects in a drawing application, a presentation application (e.g., Keynote from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a word processing application (e.g., Pages from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), or a spreadsheet application (e.g., Numbers from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.).
But existing methods for changing object formatting attributes are cumbersome and inefficient. For example, existing keyboard-based methods require multiple steps that go through menus to change object attributes, which is tedious and creates a significant cognitive burden on a user. In addition, existing methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.